The SNP’s big gamble

Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland’s first minister, has announced in Edinburgh that she would ask the Scottish parliament for permission to hold a second referendum on independence, she will take her request to parliament next week.

Read also Keith Dixon, “So is that it?”, Le Monde diplomatique, October 2014.
The timing of Sturgeon’s announcement is a surprise, as is its substance. The Scottish Nationalist Party, in power at parliament in Edinburgh, dominates Scottish politics at virtually all levels. It has consistently advocated for an independent Scotland, even since the loss of the 2014 referendum. Sturgeon wants a new vote after the conclusion of the Brexit negotiations, expected in autumn 2018 or spring 2019.

The vote would determine whether or not Scotland continues to be part of the UK as the practical effects of Brexit take hold. For months there has been speculation, fuelled by the SNP, that they might call a second referendum; but the specific timing and positioning of the referendum in the Brexit negotiations were less obvious before today’s announcement, as is the announcement of a referendum before the UK has given formal notice via article 50 of its intention to leave the EU.

There are still hurdles to pass, with the UK government required to consent to a referendum. It remains unclear whether Theresa May would exercise the option not to do this, though her considerations are likely to focus less on the prospect of an independent Scotland and more on the availability of resources needed to fight the campaign while Brexit negotiations continue. Roughly two thirds of people in Scotland oppose holding another referendum before the conclusion of Brexit talks, and polling in favour of Independence, at its most optimistic reading, hovers between 45% and 49%. There is little to suggest a radical shift in Scottish opinion on this issue since the 2014 vote.

In 2014 Scottish voters decided — 55-45% — to reject independence in favour of membership of the UK — then, as now, one of the leading exponents of austerity in the overdeveloped world. A peaceful vote, free of manipulation of voters, it was won by a campaign dubbed ‘Project Fear’ in an internal memo. Nevertheless it won, and the result was an endorsement of the UK’s status quo, which promises nothing but austerity. The SNP are gambling firstly that the decision to leave the EU is appalling enough to Scottish voters to convince them that the UK is moribund, but also that there is a bright future within the EU to which those voters can subscribe.

Currently, neither is a certainty. While Scotland as a whole voted to remain in the EU, the referendum result was not a huge surprise to many in the UK. Those Scots who voted in 2014 to remain with Westminster would have known that a referendum on EU membership was likely, and anything more than a cursory glance would have led them to believe that it might realistically result in leaving the EU. Still they voted to stay in the UK, largely it seems for economic reasons — stability, or the prospect of an independent Scotland also being a poorer Scotland, at least in the short term. Whether enough of these people can be brought around to vote in favour of Independence when, and if, this referendum is held remains to be seen.

It seems likely that economics and EU membership will be at the heart of this referendum, if it goes ahead. Ethnic or nationalistic motivations have been on the periphery of this debate in Scotland for years. The two key factors here will be unchanged from the 2014 referendum, except for one critical difference. While the EU, then and now, is adamant that Scotland cannot negotiate reentry into its ranks without being an independent state, the SNP’s vision for Scotland’s economy has become ever more neoliberal in the past decade. Today, though, North Sea oil and gas output — for decades the lynch pin of the party’s plans for an independent Scotland — has waned since 2014 and faces an uncertain future. The SNP knows that this new referendum will have to spell out clearly how an independent Scotland would negotiate being outside of the UK and EU, potentially for several years.

It’s likely that through the Brexit negotiations, the reputation of governments in Westminster, Brussels and Edinburgh will be further tarnished in the minds of the electorate. This referendum essentially places the SNP, and by extension Scotland’s future, in the hands of both the UK and EU. If the UK performs well economically, or even just above the apocalyptic standards set in the leftwing media, which has enthused about the prospect of anything being better than the UK post-Brexit, the SNP’s case will be severely harmed. Similarly there is little room for any EU crisis. Project Fear may well be all that remains on the ballot papers in two years’ time.

Simon Jones

Simon Jones is based in Glasgow and reports from the Middle East, former Soviet Union and UK.